Anatomical Humor
Anatomy wasn't fun or interesting in high school, or again when I took it at college either. Hip bone's connected to the...who cares? Well EMTs have to care. I need to know that the little bone in your wrist is your radius, that the large intestine is no longer called that...now its the colon, I need to know that the medical name for the big toe is Halidon (Latin for the "Grand Toe"). What makes the anatomy EMTs study different from that of high schoolers is the injuries.
And really, really grusome pictures of corpses bisected like layer cake.
To sucessfully treat and transport a patient an EMT needs to be able to speak the language of doctors. We get to use all the big words like "testicular torsion" (not to mention understand what they mean) but we don't get to drive the big Mercedes or Cadilacs. I guess its only fair though, med school is six or seven years while EMT is three months. By the way, testicular torsion involves twisting, thats all you need to know....trust me.
Now that all of the legal crap is done, EMT class focuses on the fun stuff, like what to do if you come across an unconcious person, how to stop the blood spraying out of a stab victim. But to do all of that you need to know where the blood is coming from, why its spraying out like Old Faithful. Learning the medical terms is tedious, to make things easier I've scotched taped diagrams of skeletons, human thoracic cavities and brains all the place. Everytime I grab some lemonade from the fridge I learn where every bone in the human body lives. When I go down stairs I see that the kidneys reside above the bladder.
Working a minimum of 8 hours each day and then going to a night EMT class can make you feel like you're going insane. I get up at six am and I'm not home until ten thirty or later. So last Wednessday I decided to blow off some steam. I had worked ten hours landscaping...thats twenty two lawns....and I went to EMT that night. Some of the other students and I decided to go out to a local bar and play some pool because, like I said, anatomy is boring. After slogging through four hours of class we took a short drive to Patrick's Pub and grabbed a round of Guinness.
I learned that a carreer in professional billards was not for me and bullshited with three of my fellow students about why they are taking the course.
One is a respitory therapist named Erin. She wants to make extra money transporting her clients and needs EMT to fullfill the requirement. Her friend Tinsly is a bartender who wants to work for AMR and do volunteer work. Gilbert is a guidance councillor at a school devoid of a nurse who eventually wants to start an extra curriuclar ambulance core at the private school that employs him. All chose to become EMTs because of they want to help people and have some fun doing it.
When I get home I find a message that my friend Hender had called from Camp Legune. The navy finally shipped him back to America but the Marine Corps wanted him at their hospital to have the last of his invasive operations performed by Marine doctors. So he's sitting down in Carolina recuperating from a procedure that was supposed to restore some of the mobility to his legs. As of a week ago he can stand on his own for two minutes unassisted.
According the Corps there's an open position at the Newport Naval War College for a marine. Hender wants that job so bad I can taste it. Originally he went to college to become a teacher but joined the Corps instead. Now, maybe, he'll get some teaching in.
I joke a lot with Hender when he calls on the phone. Most recently I told him to get ready to learn how to scuba dive with me. He said he wanted to concentrate on learning to walk again. I, of course, put him in his place by telling him: "Come on, get your fucking priorities straight here." Humor is a good way to hide the fact that you miss your friend.
And really, really grusome pictures of corpses bisected like layer cake.
To sucessfully treat and transport a patient an EMT needs to be able to speak the language of doctors. We get to use all the big words like "testicular torsion" (not to mention understand what they mean) but we don't get to drive the big Mercedes or Cadilacs. I guess its only fair though, med school is six or seven years while EMT is three months. By the way, testicular torsion involves twisting, thats all you need to know....trust me.
Now that all of the legal crap is done, EMT class focuses on the fun stuff, like what to do if you come across an unconcious person, how to stop the blood spraying out of a stab victim. But to do all of that you need to know where the blood is coming from, why its spraying out like Old Faithful. Learning the medical terms is tedious, to make things easier I've scotched taped diagrams of skeletons, human thoracic cavities and brains all the place. Everytime I grab some lemonade from the fridge I learn where every bone in the human body lives. When I go down stairs I see that the kidneys reside above the bladder.
Working a minimum of 8 hours each day and then going to a night EMT class can make you feel like you're going insane. I get up at six am and I'm not home until ten thirty or later. So last Wednessday I decided to blow off some steam. I had worked ten hours landscaping...thats twenty two lawns....and I went to EMT that night. Some of the other students and I decided to go out to a local bar and play some pool because, like I said, anatomy is boring. After slogging through four hours of class we took a short drive to Patrick's Pub and grabbed a round of Guinness.
I learned that a carreer in professional billards was not for me and bullshited with three of my fellow students about why they are taking the course.
One is a respitory therapist named Erin. She wants to make extra money transporting her clients and needs EMT to fullfill the requirement. Her friend Tinsly is a bartender who wants to work for AMR and do volunteer work. Gilbert is a guidance councillor at a school devoid of a nurse who eventually wants to start an extra curriuclar ambulance core at the private school that employs him. All chose to become EMTs because of they want to help people and have some fun doing it.
When I get home I find a message that my friend Hender had called from Camp Legune. The navy finally shipped him back to America but the Marine Corps wanted him at their hospital to have the last of his invasive operations performed by Marine doctors. So he's sitting down in Carolina recuperating from a procedure that was supposed to restore some of the mobility to his legs. As of a week ago he can stand on his own for two minutes unassisted.
According the Corps there's an open position at the Newport Naval War College for a marine. Hender wants that job so bad I can taste it. Originally he went to college to become a teacher but joined the Corps instead. Now, maybe, he'll get some teaching in.
I joke a lot with Hender when he calls on the phone. Most recently I told him to get ready to learn how to scuba dive with me. He said he wanted to concentrate on learning to walk again. I, of course, put him in his place by telling him: "Come on, get your fucking priorities straight here." Humor is a good way to hide the fact that you miss your friend.
posted by Nick Stabile at 2:27 PM
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